CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODEXTIA. 351 



When awake, the sitting position is nearly spherical, and the animal about fills the hollow of 

 the hand; but in sleeping, the body is more stretched out. Like hares, they are leaping animals, 

 but the shortness of the hind-legs renders the leap rather slow and awkward; and they are by 

 no means swift upon the ground. 



These curious animals inhabit the southeastern parts of Russia, and are found about all the 

 ridges spreading from the Ural mountains to the south, along the Irtish, and in the western parts 

 of the Altai mountains, but nowhere in the East beyond the Obi. 



The Alpine Lagomys, or Alpine Pika, L. Alpinus, called Ladajac by the Siberians, is found 

 in the Altai mountains, and in Kamtschatka and Siberia. Its general color is reddish-yellow, in- 

 terspersed with much longer hairs of a black color. The part round the mouth is ash-color, and 

 the under parts of the legs and the ears brown, the latter being rounded in their outlines. The 

 length is only about nine inches and a half. 



This species is very abundant in some parts of Siberia, where it is well known to the hunters. 

 It is found on the slopes of the steepest mountains, and even on the most inaccessible rocks: but 

 in all situations they prefer the humid copses, in which, in rocky and mountainous places especi- 

 ally, they find abundance of herbage during the whole of the summer season. They are, strictlv 

 speaking, ground animals, and live indiscriminately in burrows excavated by themselves, m holes 

 of the rocks, and in the hollows of decayed trees. They are not gregarious, but are found singly. 

 or in pairs, or in families, according to the season. About the middle of August they begin to 

 collect with great diligence and industry their store of provisions for the winter. This consists 

 of the seeds of plants, of leaves, and of grasses, and they make their magazines in the earth, in 

 the holes of rocks, or in the hollows of trees. These stores are not collected by each animal 

 for itself; for, according to the number that may be in any particular locality, they unite in the 

 labor of collecting the winter store; and it is understood that so true does the collecting 

 instinct remain while the store lasts, that none of those who bore a part in the labor of col- 

 lecting are ever excluded from their share of the magazine, neither can strangers invade it, how 

 severely soever necessity may pinch them. These magazines are often of very considerable 

 magnitude, considering the small size of the animals. They frequently bear a considerable resem- 

 blance to a hay-rick, seven or eight feet high, and about the same in diameter; and when they 

 are of this size, the animals form a subterranean passage from their own dwellings to the store, 

 by which they can find their way when the whole is buried under the snow. These animals do 

 not, as we have hinted, commit any depredations upon the stores of each other, but they often 

 do not come off so well at the hands of the Siberian hunters, who, when provender for their 

 horses fails, frequently plunder these industrious little creatures. 



Pallas examined, with that attention which he was in the habit of paying to all subjects con- 

 lected with the economy of nature, the stores collected against the season of want by these provi- 

 lent animals. He found that they displayed wonderful animal sagacity, both in the plants which 

 hey selected and in the time at which they cut them down. There were no thorny plants or 

 igneous stems; and the whole appeared to have been cut down at that stage of their growth at 

 vhich grasses are understood to make the best hay. If grasses or other plants which are in- 

 ended for this purpose are cut down too early, they are full of sap, which is not only tasteless, 

 >ut it ferments and rots the whole when gathered into a heap. On the other hand, if the 

 tems of annual plants stand till the grand labor of the vear is over by the ripening of the seeds, 

 he stems which are left are sapless, and afford but little nourishment. The pikas avoid both 

 bese extremes, and cut down their winter store when the juice of the stem has acquired its great- 

 •>t maturity and sweetness. These harmless little animals, though exposed to the peril of famine 

 y having their stores plundered by the hunters, have still other enemies beside the human race, 

 he weasel tribe, which are very numerous in that part of the world, seek the abodes of the 

 ikas with much assiduity, and kill them in great numbers; and, as is the case with many of the 

 arm-blooded animals in those northern countries, they are much infested and tormented with 

 te larva? of insects. 



The Gray Pika, or Ogotoxa, L. Ogotona, is of a pale gray, and is found in Mongol Tartary, 

 ; pecially in the Desert of Gobi, and in the regions around Lake Baikal. It is an animal of the 



